Re: Buildfarm alarms

Tom Lane wrote:
> "Andrew Dunstan" <andrew@dunslane.net> writes:
>> It could certainly be done. In general, I have generally taken the view
>> that owners have the responsibility for monitoring their own machines.
>
> Sure, but providing them tools to do that seems within buildfarm's
> purview.
>
> For some types of failure, the buildfarm script could make a local
> notification without bothering the server --- but a timeout on the
> server side would cover a wider variety of failures, including "this
> machine is dead and ought to be removed from the farm".
>

Nothing gets removed. If a machine does not report on a branch for 30 days
it drops off the dashboard, but apart from that it is a retained historic
aretfact. This buildup in history has been gradually slowing down the
dashboard, in fact, but Ian Barwick tells me that he has rewritten my
lousy SQL to make it fast again, so we'll soon get that working better.

Anyway, I think we can do something fairly simply for these alarms. We'll
just have a special stanza in the config file, and a cron job that checks,
say, once a day, to see if we have exceeded the alarm period on any
machine/branch combination.

cheers

andrew